Notes

WARNING: This page is not suitable for the average user. Information in this page is for experienced hackers only.

This page is a community work in progress in preparation for the first users. If something doesn't work or isn't covered in these guides, please feel free to ask on the Forum. But before you ask there, make sure you read the FAQs.

This page is based on BeagleBoardBeginners therefore so the serial port info is only appliable only under explained circumstances. Also, many Raspberry Pi users will buy pre-programmed SD cards and can skip to reading RPi Hardware Basic Setup. We expect that once Raspberry Pi boards become generally available helpful volunteers will update this page to match Raspberry Pi completely or point to better information elsewhere.

You'll likely also want a USB mouse, a case, and a USB Hub (a necessity for Model A). A powered USB Hub will reduce the demand on the RPi. To connect to the Internet, you'll need either an Ethernet/LAN cable (Model B) or a USB WiFi adaptor (either model). See RPi VerifiedPeripherals for more information on supported peripherals.

Serial connection

Advanced SD card setup

Now we want to use an SD card to install some GNU/Linux distro in it and get more space for our stuff. You can use either an SD or SDHC card. In the latter case of course take care that your PC card reader also supports SDHC.
Be aware that you are not dealing with an x86 processor, but instead a completely different architecture called ARM, so don't forget to install the ARM port for the distro you are planning to use.

Our first step will be the formatting of the SD card.

Formatting the SD card via the mkcard.txt script

(to be completed)

Download mkcard.txt from ???.

$ chmod +x mkcard.txt

$ ./mkcard.txt /dev/sdx, Where x is the letter of the card. You can find this by inserting your card and then running dmesg | tail. You should see the messages about the device being mounted in the log. Mine mounts as sdc.

Once run, your card should be formatted.

Formatting the SD card via fdisk "Expert mode"

First, lets clear the partition table:

================================================================================
$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
Command (m for help): o
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won't be recoverable.
Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)
================================================================================

NOTE: For convenience, you can add the -L option to the mkfs.ext3 command to assign a volume label to the new ext3 filesystem. If you do that, the new (automatic) mount point under /media when you insert that SD card into some Linux hosts will be based on that label. If there's no label, the new mount point will most likely be a long hex string, so assigning a label makes manual mounting on the host more convenient.

Setting up the boot partition

The boot partition must contain the following files, get them from one of the official images:(bootable/fat32 partition)

bootcode.bin : 2nd stage bootloader, starts with SDRAM disabled

loader.bin : 3rd stage bootloader, starts with SDRAM enabled

start.elf: The GPU binary firmware image, provided by the foundation.

kernel.img: The OS kernel to load on the ARM processor. Normally this is Linux - see instructions for compiling a kernel.

cmdline.txt: Parameters passed to the kernel on boot.

Optional files:

config.txt: A configuration file read by the GPU. Use this to override set the video mode, alter system clock speeds, voltages, etc.

arm224_start.elf : 224M ARM, 32M GPU split (use this for Linux only with no 3D or video processing. Its enough for the 1080p framebuffer, but not much else)

Finally booting GNU/Linux

important steps

to be completed

Software development/proving

A supported platform for the Raspberry is Qt, which is already being worked on.
C/C++ is supported through a gcc cross-compiling toolchain. On Debian/Ubuntu systems, the packages gcc-4.6-arm-linux-gnueabi and g++-4.6-arm-linux-gnueabi provide suitable compilers. For other build platforms, Chris has good instructions for building a cross-compiler - this should also work in a Cygwin environment on Windows.

Python is being pushed forward by the foundation. (Status ??)

After compiling, using QEMU and a Linux VM would be one way of testing your apps (this also works on Windows).
Search the forum for the ready-made ARM images.

The choice of programming languages, IDEs and other tools on the R-Pi is only determined by:

1) The operating system compatibility (at the moment the specific Linux distro used)

2) The status of the respective ARM package repositories and their binary compatibility

3) The possibilty to build other software + its dependencies for the R-Pi from sources (depends on C cross-compiler ???)

What kind of software development and testing loop has been proven effective please (from someone who's been there and done it)?